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Pike, with Sour-Sweet Sauce

Pike fillets simmered in a sour‑sweet sauce of vinegar, red currant jelly, raisins, almonds, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pike, with Sour-Sweet Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pike

  1. Cut the pike into lengths and place in a basin with a handful of coarse sea salt and a little water for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the pike with a cloth, then flour it and arrange in a stewpan.

Cook

  1. Spread the bottom of the pan with butter and moisten the pike with vinegar to three-quarters of their height.

  2. Add parsley, pepper, red currant jelly, raisins, and shredded almonds.

  3. Bring to a boil, then cover the stewpan tightly and place on a very low fire or in a slow oven for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, color the sauce with a few drops of cochineal and serve with horseradish shavings on each end of the dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Red currant + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pike
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until it becomes tender and flaky.
Flour
Coats the pike, helping it hold together and giving the sauce body as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the pan and adds richness to the fish and sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the jelly and raisins.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body to the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Cooking on a very low fire or in a slow oven. Boiling after the initial bring-to-a-boil would toughen the fish and break it apart. Gentle, covered heat cooks the pike through while keeping its texture moist and intact.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, vinegar, parsley, pepper, raisin, almond):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, vinegar, parsley, pepper, raisin, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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